Bocchiaro

Question	Answer
What was the aim of the study?	To see how many people will comply with an unethical request and how many will respond by 'whistle-blowing' to a higher authority. A secondary aim was to compare actual rates of disobedience and whistle-blowing to estimated rates.
What was Bocchiaro's method?	149 students were given an unethical request, to write a statement designed to convince other students to participate in a traumatic sensory deprivation experiment. Participants were then left alone to see what they would do. In a separate procedure, 138 students were told about the scenario and asked both what they would do, and what they thought the average student will do.
What were his results?	When questioned most participants said they would report the unethical experiment and that the average student would disobey. However, 76.5% actually obeyed and only 9.4% 'blew the whistle'.
What conclusions did Bocchiaro make?	Although most people believe they will disobey unethical instructions and report unethical conduct, in practice the majority comply with unethical instructions.
Participants?	All participants were undergraduates students from the VU University of Amsterdam. Ninety-two people took part in the pilot studies, and a further 149 in the main experiment procedure (96 women and 53 men, with a mean age of 20.8 years).

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	Created by exhalecho almost 9 years ago